1. Field
The present disclosure relates to a mobile terminal capable of correcting the disparity range of an object that falls outside a reference disparity range in response to a stereoscopic three-dimensional (3D) image including the object being enlarged or reduced, and an operation control method of the mobile terminal.
2. Background
Mobile terminals are portable devices, which can provide users with various services such as a voice calling service, a video calling service, an information input/output service, and a data storage service.
As the types of services provided by mobile terminals diversify, an increasing number of mobile terminals have been equipped with various complicated functions such as capturing photos or moving pictures, playing music files or moving image files, providing game programs, receiving broadcast programs and providing wireless internet services, and have thus evolved into multimedia players.
Various attempts have been made to realize such complicated functions as hardware devices or software programs. For example, various user interface (UI) environments, in which users are allowed to easily search for and choose desired functions, have been developed. In addition, the demand for various designs for mobile terminals has steadily grown due to a growing tendency of considering mobile terminals as personal items that can represent personal individuality.
In the meantime, stereoscopic three-dimensional (3D) imaging, which is a technique of combining multiple images captured by a camera to create a stereoscopic 3D image, have recently become commonplace. When applied to mobile terminals, stereoscopic 3D imaging can allow the users to create stereoscopic 3D images using the cameras of the mobile terminals and to display various stereoscopic 3D images on the displays of the mobile terminals. Stereoscopic 3D images can be displayed on the displays of mobile terminals using various methods such as auto-stereoscopy, which is also called glasses-free 3D.
Stereoscopic 3D images are generally created based on the disparity between left and right images thereof (e.g., a difference in relative positioning of the left and right images). Thus, if there are objects in stereoscopic 3D images that fall beyond a user's parallax limit, the objects may appear distorted and may thus cause fatigue, nausea, and/or headaches. This distortion becomes more severe when enlarging or reducing the stereoscopic 3D images.
Therefore, a method is needed to correct objects in a stereoscopic 3D image that fall outside a reference disparity range in response to the stereoscopic 3D image being enlarged or reduced.